28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[Spun Lepton]

I watched Midnight Madness. I may go into more detail later, but ... a generous 3/10. Just painful.

[Spun Lepton]

Imagine a couple of the writers for the utterly unwatchable sitcom 2 Broke Girls decided to write a caper comedy for kids. But, in order to appeal to the adults in the audience, they also decided to add in weirdly inappropriate sexual humor. I think this is the best description for Midnight Madness. All of the characters are drawn in the broadest strokes possible. These aren't just exaggerated performances, these are living caricatures. There are a couple of those in the comparable Scavenger Hunt, but in Midnight Madness, everybody outside of the five leads at the film's core are living cartoons. Stephen Furst's entire team are so exaggerated that they quickly become irritating. Stephen Furst himself plays a cartoonishly evil "fat buffoon," whose desire to eat all the time leads to his team's loss. His team is literally made up of: his constantly nagging girlfriend, a friend who smirks and revels in every one of Furst's failures, an idiot nicknamed Barf who spends 90% of the movie looking slack-jawed and laughing like Butthead, and Blade, a mute Hispanic man who always has a switchblade out. The other teams in the movie don't fare any better. Eddie Deezen does his usual nerd thing and actually gets the only legitimate laugh in the entire movie -- a moment where his character gets hit in the face with a tomato. I assure you, the gag works only because of his reaction and timing and not because of the writing in the scene. It's also early enough in the movie to give you some false hope that the rest of this trainwreck might be enjoyable.

Every line of dialogue feels like a reject from a Full House episode. There's an attempt as a human story here, too, with David Naughton's character making a familial connection with his younger brother, played by a very young Michael J. Fox. Naughton also has a love interest that "develops" throughout the movie. But both of these side-plots feel very unearned in the end. Both of them rely on the characters having convenient epiphanies rather than gradually learning throughout the story. Naughton coming around to love his brother is literally a scene where he drives away and leaves the movie for a minute or two, and then returns after having complete 180-degree change of heart off-screen. Guh.

But, I think the worst part about it is just how irritating every single character in the movie is. Characters who are supposed to be likeable are utterly punchable. I hated all of them. I wanted everybody to lose. I kept hoping they would suddenly find themselves in the movie Miracle Mile, with atomic blasts going off all around L.A., but alas, it was not meant to be.

2/10


I'm done being generous to this garbage heap.

**Edit 360-degree to 180-degree

[Idioteque Stalker]

You've got Kiki's Delivery Service awfully low on that list.

I like Kiki very much overall, but two pretty insignificant things really bother me for some reason. First, it's annoying to me how rude she is for no reason to that one really nice kid. Second, she's super reckless around streets/traffic. It's one of a few I've only seen once -- maybe it'll move up the list one day.

Have ye watched Castle of Cagliostro and Gauche the Cellist? Although they're not Ghibli per se, they were made by Miyazaki and Takahata and are very good.

Also, The Red Turtle is technically a Ghibli too.

I have seen and liked Cagliostro, but haven't gotten my hands on Gauche. I didn't count them (or Horus: Prince of the Sun, which I love) because they were released before Ghibli was founded, but then again that is also true of Nausicaa...

And The Red Turtle is a good movie that doesn't feel like a proper Ghibli release to me, probably because it's not anime. It'd be somewhere right smack dab in the middle of my list, right around Grave of the Fireflies.

Love seeing Kaguya so high on your list. Hate seeing The Cat Returns so low. You must hate cats!

[Philip J. Fry]

I have seen and liked Cagliostro, but haven't gotten my hands on Gauche. I didn't count them (or Horus: Prince of the Sun, which I love) because they were released before Ghibli was founded, but then again that is also true of Nausicaa...

And The Red Turtle is a good movie that doesn't feel like a proper Ghibli release to me, probably because it's not anime. It'd be somewhere right smack dab in the middle of my list, right around Grave of the Fireflies.

Love seeing Kaguya so high on your list. Hate seeing The Cat Returns so low. You must hate cats!

Nah, I love cats. I just find Cat Returns kinda dull, at least for Ghibli standards, and kinda forgettable. It just doesn't feel like it has that richness in characterization of other films. It's not a bad movie and I don't really dislike it. It's just that Ghibli's standards are pretty high.

Also, It's the first time I've heard of Horus: Prince of the Sun, so I'll look out for it.

[StuSmallz]

The best films of Sundance 2022: our favorites of the fest include Happening, After Yang, and Emily The Criminal

[megladon8]

Watched my first Taylor Sheridan film last night with Wind River, and it was phenomenal.

Everyone is fantastic in it, beautiful dialogue, and a conclusion that is equal parts heart wrenching and hopeful.

Still digesting it, but initial feelings and enthusiasm have me wanting to rank it with some of the GOAT's of its type (Memories of Murder, Gone Baby Gone, etc.)

"She ran six miles in the snow."

[Philip J. Fry]

Watched my first Taylor Sheridan film last night with Wind River, and it was phenomenal.

Everyone is fantastic in it, beautiful dialogue, and a conclusion that is equal parts heart wrenching and hopeful.

Still digesting it, but initial feelings and enthusiasm have me wanting to rank it with some of the GOAT's of its type (Memories of Murder, Gone Baby Gone, etc.)

"She ran six miles in the snow."

I recently watched an Aussie film of that type starring Eric Bana. It's called The Dry. You should give it a shot. It's pretty good.

[megladon8]

Very cool, I will check it out. Thank you!

I always liked Eric Bana. Wish he had a stronger career.

[Philip J. Fry]

Very cool, I will check it out. Thank you!

I always liked Eric Bana. Wish he had a stronger career.

Same.

[Skitch]

Same. Hes underrated imo.

[megladon8]

Chopper is worth seeing just for his performance.

[DFA1979]

Chopper is worth seeing just for his performance.

Good flick.

Wind River is excellent, also. I saw that in theaters.

[StuSmallz]

Wind River is excellent, also. I saw that in theaters.

I liked it too, which is why I'm going to repost my old review of it in here now:

[

Show Spoiler

In Wind River, the tracks of predators and prey, both animal and human alike, constantly dot the endless, perpetually snowy landscape, inevitably leading to traumas that, while they may be past, are anything but forgotten. The "River" in question is a Native American reservation in Wyoming, where, somewhere in this desolate, lifeless landscape the size of Rhode Island, an 18 year-old Native American girl is found brutally raped, her body frozen to the ground so solid that a chainsaw has to clear her from the unforgiving frost. A young agent from the FBI gets called in, a local Wildlife Service agent gets involved, and together, the two of them must find out what happened to the girl on that bitterly cold, horrible night. If all of that sounds like setup for a rather familiar detective thriller, that's because it is; Wind River doesn't break any new (frozen) ground when it comes to its particular genre, but then again, it doesn't pretend to.

Rather, first-time director (but veteran screenwriter) Taylor Sheridan takes the suspenseful style he honed on the American frontiers of West Texas and the Mexican border in Hell Or High Water & Sicario, and applies it to the forgotten, neglected wasteland of Wind River, a place that's depressed in both the economic and spiritual sense of the word, where poverty is everywhere, drug addiction runs rampant, and, due to the bureaucratic nightmares that intersect between tribal, local, and Federal authorities when it comes to jurisdiction over crimes on reservations, many serious offences (including murders) are often never punished, or even solved.


Into this daunting situation steps Elizabeth Olsen's determined, but out-of-her-element FBI rookie Jane Banner, joined by Jeremy Renner's grieving, divorced, world-weary Wildlife agent Cory Lambert, a man who has a rather personal connection to this particular case, as, not only was he the one who discovered the young woman's body, but the girl in question used to be close friends with his daughter, who herself was murdered under similar, unsolved circumstances a couple of years ago, a loss that Lambert admits he still hasn't recovered from, nor ever will. But, like I said before, pretty much none of the base material here is particularly original, it's the personal touch in Sheridan's direction that makes all the difference, as he never hesitates from taking the time to slow down the pace drastically, and just let us get to know the characters ourselves through quiet scenes of his insightful, sharply-written dialogue, balancing the character to character heart-to-hearts inbetween the film's more visceral, intense thrills.


And, while the central mystery isn't much of a, well, mystery, as, except for an unexpected flashback that takes place late in the third act, the plot proceeds in a rather simple, straightforward manner, with next to no red herrings or "persons of interest" to speak of, it isn't the suspense of where the investigation may lead that makes Wind River so good, nor is it the thrills of its various armed standoffs/shootouts (although those are quite good in their own right), but it's the touches of personal, human drama that happen along the way, the way that Sheridan genuinely cares for his characters here, and the way that they're treated as much more than just hollow puppets to move the story along, that makes River as powerful, as memorable a cinematic experience as it is. Long after you leave the comfort of your air-conditioned theater, the physical & emotional atmosphere of the vast, frozen landscape presented here will chill your bones, the tracks dotting it leaving visible marks as undeniable as the spiritual ones staining the souls of the people who live there.

]

Final Score: 8.5

[Skitch]

I thought that was a very decent flick. Very.

[Philip J. Fry]

I thought that was a very decent flick. Very.

Yeah. Very much so.

[transmogrifier]

How the fuck have I managed to watch four Shawn Levy movies in my life? One is an understandable mistake, two is careless, three is irresponsible... but FOUR?

[Philip J. Fry]

How the fuck have I managed to watch four Shawn Levy movies in my life? One is an understandable mistake, two is careless, three is irresponsible... but FOUR?

Some folks were just born to suffer.

[StuSmallz]

Some folks were just born to suffer.

[transmogrifier]

Some folks were just born to suffer.

Here I am asserting my independence and standing up to the Marvel machine by not bothering to keep up with them, and I've seen FOUR Shawn Levy movies? Talk about a splash of cold water on the face.

(in case anyone was wondering, I was updating my Excel viewing log and came to Free Guy.... and then it dawned on me. I don't even think I knew going in who directed it.)

[Skitch]

*looks over imdb

The only thing I've seen directed by him is Stranger Things. Fuck is wrong with you, trans, gross

[Philip J. Fry]

Damn.

[Yxklyx]

"No movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad." - Roger Ebert

What if the movie features both?

Straight Time is alright - it's not bad. Worth a look. Saw this on Amazon Prime (for a slight additional cost) and the picture looked awesome, like it was filmed last year.

Starring Dustin Hoffman and it appears he co-directed.

[baby doll]

Some folks were just born to suffer.

"Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to Endless Night"

Now be sensible and go watch Dead Man. Or Endless Night, or something else not mediocre.

[megladon8]

Every couple of years Jen and I do a year of what we call "Picks" in an effort to not just endlessly rewatch the same favorites. Twice a week one of us picks a movie that the other cannot dispute.

Tonight Jen picked The Trouble With Harry, a Hitchcock film neither of us had seen before.

We both went into it pretty much blind, and enjoyed it a lot. A sharp black comedy that feels like it must have been an influence on the Coen's and others like them.

Stumbles once or twice with gags that overstay their welcome. And the amount of time that passes over the course of the story doesn't make sense at all.

It's not quite top level Hitchcock, but not one of his weaker efforts.

[Grouchy]

Love that movie, that's cool that you discovered it. Shirley MacLaine is tops.